Patreon, YouTube, and Facebook... Oh My!

Hey everybody

I realise it's been a bit quiet around these parts recently, but Always Board Never Boring is a little bit like a swan: On the surface, everything is calm and serene, and it doesn't look like much is happening. But underneath...

Underneath, I'm a seething ball of hatred that wants to break your arm.

Wait...

That doesn't seem right.

Okay. So, the point is, there haven't been many updates here on the blog recently, but that doesn't mean I haven't been a busy little beaver...

Wait...

I thought I was a swan.

I shouldn't do these updates when I'm tired.

I'll start again...

Hey everybody! Want to know what I've been up to recently. The answer is, "Loadsa stuff."

First of all, I've been trying to get my Patreon up and running. So far, running isn't really the right word. Limping isn't really the right word either.

Lying down for a nap?

I dunno. I poked it with a stick earlier and it let out a faint groan.

With a Little Help from My Friends

I'm taking a quick break from your (ir)regular (not exactly) scheduled programme to talk a little bit about Always Board Never Boring as a product. Bear with me here, I'll try to keep it brief...

I started this blog back in 2012, with the intention of using it to catalogue my collection of out-of-production board games. Since then, I've expanded the remit considerably, and I've published articles on many new and old games. Recently I've ended up talking quite a lot about Games Workshop products and started introducing more articles relating to hobby aspects such as painting and miniature conversions.

Shadow War: Armageddon - Look At What You Could Have Won

This is a warning: What follows is not an unboxing or a review. It's a healthy dose of personal opinion by somebody with an inflated sense of self-importance. I will be reviewing the game at a later date; but by posting this article first, I can focus my review on the actual game and not the shit show surrounding its launch.

So, here I am with my brand new copy of Shadow War: Armageddon. I should be excited. I kinda am excited.

But I'm a bit depressed too.

For anyone who hasn't been keeping up with current events, Armageddon is a revamped version of Games Workshop's classic game of gang warfare, Necromunda. It was hyped to heck and back, and went up for preorder at 10am on April 1st.

It sold out at 10:10am.

And it wasn't an April Fools joke.

It's About Time

I got an e-mail from eBay the other week.

Nothing particularly unusual about that. I get e-mails from eBay pretty much everyday: "You've been outbid," "That seller you like has listed something you didn't realise you needed until right now," "We know where you live," "We're coming for your soul."

But on this occasion, the e-mail was something rather unexpected: A £15 money-off voucher for any purchase over £30.

That's nice, but I couldn't really think of anything I wanted or needed.

After reading the e-mail, I returned to my latest game of Betrayal at Calth, and I moved my unit of Blood Angel terminators, repurposed from Space Hulk. You see, regular readers (if such mythic entities truly exist) may remember that when Betrayal at Calth came out last year, I really couldn't justify the £95 price tag, so I ended up purchasing only the cardboard components from a seller on eBay, and then proxying the miniatures.

Perhaps you can see where this article is going.

The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary - Inane Ramblings About Kickstarter

IPs aren't bullet proof. Miniatures games on Kickstarter aren't guaranteed to generate $1 million in pledges. Sometimes even a Plan B isn't enough.

These are the things that the current Kickstarter campaign for The Walking Dead: No Sanctuary has taught us.

It's been a painful lesson, and much like a bite from a walker, has caused a lot of backers to groan, gnash their teeth, and develop a thirst for human blood.

However, unlike a bite from a zombie, it looks like this little incident doesn't end with a bullet to the head.

In fact, unlike most zombie stories, this one has a happy ending.

Gloom of Kilforth - Inane Ramblings About Kickstarter

To quote a very famous song: "A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep."

True enough. But nobody ever fulfilled their dreams sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

I learned early that in this life, you tend to have to make your own dreams come true while you're wide awake.

I decided I wanted to become a writer when I was 12 years old, and I wrote my first novel (it was terrible) when I was 15 years old.

I don't remember a time when I didn't want to write.

Nova Aetas: Inane Ramblings About Kickstarter

I grew up with Zelda.

I don't mean literally. That would be weird.

But I grew up playing Zelda. However, all that running around and bouncing into people with swords didn't really interest me all that much.

What I really loved was the tactical thrill of crushing enemies on the battlefield in turn-based roleplaying games. I think it's because I was a boardgamer before I was a video gamer, and playing too much Heroquest had ingrained it in my mind that all good games require a little grid of squares for working out movement.

The Shining Force series on the Mega Drive was my favourite. Interesting characters, cool powers and levelling up options, groovy in-fight animations, a challenging campaign, and dynamic music that changes whenever someone attacks. Man, I used to really panic when that music played and one of my healers was in the line of fire.

Best of all, when you look at the battle map where you move your units around, everyone does this little jigging on the spot thing that makes them look like they want to go to the toilet.

It's adorable.

Beyond Shining Force, there was Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Valkyrie Profile... You get the idea.

Those games, along with other roleplaying games such as Secret of Mana, Landstalker, and (yes), The Legend of Zelda, sculpted my formative years. It's no wonder that, as an adult, I write children's fantasy adventure stories. You can see the influence of those games in a lot of my work.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across the Kickstarter campaign for Nova Aetas.

If you don't know what Kickstarter is, it is basically a crowdfunding system. You give developers some money to make something, and then you usually get a copy of the thing they make.

I pretty much swore off Kickstarter after the unimaginable depths of my disappointment with the game Myth, but then Nova Aetas came along.

It's a pretty tempting proposition. Set in an alternative "Dark Renaissance" populated with famous historical figures and monsters such as fawns and centaurs, it promises tactical combat in a linked campaign.

Leonardo... Not the turtle.

Players select a small group of heroes, and advance through a series of battles, levelling up and progressing through a skill tree that is clearly inspired by many video game roleplaying titles. Part of the evolution of the characters involves hunting for creatures, harvesting the corpses, and then crafting your own fabulous weapons. You also get the chance to meet NPCs, and then hire them, or piss them off and fight them instead.

Choices made by players dictate how the story unfolds, and the available missions, and there are three different endings for one campaign.



The apprentice mage skill tree.

It all sounds pretty interesting, but a campaign means nothing without good mechanisms to back it up, and here I think Nova Aetas offers something special.

Each mission involves opposing forces on a grid, and every character has a certain number of action points. A special device called a horologium marks the passage of time (and the length of the battle). When the minute hand moves around to a space containing character tokens, the associated characters get to activate in speed order. They use action points to move, fight, and use special powers, and for each action point their token moves one space on the horologium. The character is then unable to act again until the minute hand catches up with them.

Now, players of The World of Warcraft: Miniature Game may recognise this as being similar to the u-base system. And it is, but with one massive improvement... No bloody u-bases. Man, those things were crap.



The horologium

Furthermore, the villains in the game run on an AI, so everybody gets to be a hero. I have come to realise that, when it comes to this sort of game, I really prefer a co-operative setup where everyone plays against the game, rather than one person having to command the bad guys. Of course, a good AI system isn't easy to create, but from what we know about Nova Aetas, this one seems pretty solid. Each hero represents a threat level, which gets higher as they do bothersome stuff like bashing in the skulls of the bad guys. While the threat level is low, the heroes get ignored, but as the threat level increases, they suddenly become much more interesting.

So, there is is... Nova Aetas. A "Dark Renaissance" tactical roleplaying skirmish thingy, with some very nice looking plastic miniatures, and what appears to be a good set of game mechanisms. The game has already funded, and the combat rules are available to read. That has to be worth a look right?

I'll stick a link...

HERE

So you can see for yourself.



Look. The link's up there.

Now, before I sign off, I have to throw out the usual warnings and caveats. I am not affiliated with this Kickstarter campaign in any way, it is just a game that I thought looked cool. I do not have any insider information. I do not even know if the final game is going to be any good. If you want to back the game, that's cool. Tell them Kevin sent you.

Just don't blame me if the final product doesn't live up to everything I hope it will be.

Happy gaming, folks.

ADDENDUM (30/03/2015):

Sadly, as the campaign for Nova Aetas progressed, it became apparent that the company had not prepared well. They were translating the rulebook on the fly, and had no adequate gameplay videos to show off all the interesting nuances the game promised. Eventually, backers started to pull out, and even though the game was fully funded, eventually enough people fled the sinking ship to defund the project completely.

It's a shame it happened, and I very much hope Nova Aetas returns in the future. Better videos, the beta rules, and more images of completed miniatures could make all the difference. For now, this is just an example of why it is so important to prepare well before launching on Kickstarter. Sometimes, the promise of awesomeness simply isn't enough to get those backer dollars rolling in (and staying in).


* All photographs are the property of Ludus Magnus Studio LLC. Reproduced here with kind permission.

Roots - A New Novel

Okay, so I have to hold my hands up... I have not been updating AlwaysBoardNeverBoring as much as I should. I have dozens of games to review, including the truly horrific Thunderbirds from Susan Prescott games, and the far less horrific Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords. However, I have a good excuse.

Honest.

For the last month, I have been feverishly putting the finishing touches to my new novel for young adults, Roots.

So, what's it all about?

Well, let's see what I put on the Amazon page...


A mysterious tree, an incurable disease, a troll, a zombie, an immortal, an assassin, a giant earthworm, a missing girl, and one dead cat.

Nobody said being a superhero was going to be easy...

Duncan has a list. It is a complete rundown of all the things he hates most in the world; and like many fifteen-year-old boys, he hates a lot. He hates that he can’t get the girl he wants. He hates that he isn’t good enough at football to be picked for the team. And he hates Carl, the school bully, who feels pretty much the same way about him.

But Duncan is about to make a discovery that will allow him to get whatever he wants. The problem is, he isn't the only one.

Roots is a horror fantasy science fiction psychological thriller mystery romantic comedy superhero origin story for young adults, from Kevin Outlaw, author of The Legend Riders trilogy.

If that sounds like something you might like to read, the book is available through Amazon Kindle in all countries (English language only), and it is totally free if you are enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited programme. A paperback edition will be available in the New Year.

Here are some handy-dandy links:

Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com

And that's all you need to know. I hope you will consider downloading the book, sharing it with your friends, and posting reviews. It all helps to make me a little bit happier. And isn't making me a little bit happier what we all want out of life?

Right...

Please forgive this shameless plug. I promise I will be returning to reviews very soon. Thank you all for your continued support

I Love a Good Bargain

I love a bargain. I'm one of those people who buys an extra bottle of milk he doesn't need, just because it's "buy one, get one half price." There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of kicking back with a long, cool glass of slightly gone-off milk, knowing you got it for marginally less than the usual sticker price.

My love of bargains explains why I spend so much time in charity shops searching for that elusive copy of Heroquest, and an equal amount of time in Poundland, hoping there might be some discontinued card game that has somehow turned up among all the broken toys and blind-packaged oddities.

And my love of bargains is why I bought Coin Age.

Coin Age is one of those games that came into existence following a successful Kickstarter campaign.

(You know, Kickstarter: that site where you pay a load of money and then, at an unspecified time in the future, someone sends you a box of disappointment.)

Normally, when I back something on Kickstarter I am pretty excited about the prospect of receiving it. Coin Age was the exception. I backed it solely because you could get the game delivered to your door for just $3. Okay, I paid $5, which was the suggested minimum amount, but I didn't have to... I love a bargain, but I'm not an asshole.

So, I dropped my $5, and then pretty much forgot all about this game. Which is just as well, because it was delayed by about six months. If I had been waiting expectantly for its arrival, I might have been a bit annoyed.

Then, this Saturday, after I had spent the day painting a garden fence (it was a big fence), I came into the house to find the postman had dropped off a little envelope with Coin Age printed on the front. Which was a nice surprise.

Postman's been.

And it's pretty cool considering what I paid.

Inside the envelope there is a plastic ziplock bag, a rule sheet, two punchboards of tokens (for people who don't want to play the game with real money), four sticker sheets (for people who fancy defacing their pocket change), two double-sided game boards the size of playing cards, and one game board made in plastic so you can slip it in your credit card wallet.

Isle Oyou... Get it?... I'LL OWE YOU! HAHAHAHA!

I admit, I wasn't quite as excited opening this as I was receiving my two Dark Darker Darkest Kickstarter boxes, but that is hardly surprising.

But yeah... It's all really nice. The punchboards are relatively thick, the game boards are good quality and nicely printed, and the rules are clear.

Money money money...

The game itself is a simple area control game, but it looks like it has some good strategy for such a compact title. I'm not going to review the game just yet, because I haven't played it. But I should be able to get some games in with Mrs Never Boring soon.

So, until then, I guess that's all I have to say.

Now, you'll have to excuse me. I left some milk out, and I really should go drink it...

The oddballs Have Landed...

The other day I heard the postman desperately attempting to jam a package through my letterbox. I wasn't expecting anything, so it was quite exciting as I opened the package to see what it was. Turns out it was oddball Aeronauts, a little card game that I backed on Kickstarter a while back and then pretty much forgot about. A nice surprise.

Excitedly, I opened the box to check out what my money had bought. My impressions were mixed, which seems to be a running theme with games I Kickstart.

First of all, the box for the game is stunning. It is sturdy and compact, and the artwork is lovely. That artwork continues onto the cards, which have a clean design and look amazing. There was also a very attractive enamel pin, which was one of the Kickstarter stretch goals. I wouldn't ever wear it, and it is quite small; but it looks really good.

Unfortunately, I was not so impressed by anything else, and there were some missed opportunities to make things really shine.

The game includes a "first player" token, which is simply a wooden disc. Why there wasn't a stretch goal for a sticker to put on one side is beyond me. It would have made the token something that you could flip, and would have looked more attractive.

The tin that was available as a stretch goal was also a bit of a fail. I was never particularly excited about the tin anyway, but considering it is not big enough to fit all the cards, it is almost entirely pointless. In addition, it wasn't a printed tin; it came with a sticker to apply by hand. That would be fine if the sticker was the right size and shape.

Finally, I found the rules to be poorly written. There isn't a single example of play to go through, hardly any diagrams, and several sections where I simply could not work out how to play. For a simple two-player card game, that isn't great.

However, the game itself does look like a lot of fun, and the cards truly are beautiful. As it stands at the moment, despite how negative I sound, I am glad I backed the game. Additionally, this game turned up early, complete, and with no manufacturing defects. That right there makes it one of the best Kickstarter games ever.

Once I have played a few times, I will post a review.

Fireteam Zero: Inane Ramblings about Kickstarter

Okay, I don't normally do this sort of thing, but it's Saturday evening, my wife is about to head off to work, and I am bored, so screw it... I'm going to talk about a game I'm backing on Kickstarter. This is not a review, it's just some directionless ramblings about a game I liked the look of and threw some money at. Hell, the game isn't even out yet, and won't be for some time.

(If you don't know how Kickstarter works, it is basically a crowdfunding website: You give someone money, they use the money to make something, and then they usually send you a copy of that something. Or they run off with your money.)

(Oh, and fair warning: Everything that follows is my opinion based only on what I have seen on the Kickstarter campaign. I am not privy to any "behind the scenes" stuff. I may be wrong about everything. Caveat emptor. And so on.)

The game in question is Fireteam Zero, which is based on a series of books. The premise is simple: In World War II, an undercover team of badass soldiers takes on supernatural entities in a series of gruelling close-combat scenarios. The soldiers co-operate to achieve a mission, while grotesque, nightmarish monsters swarm towards them in never-ending waves. It's like being in a pressure cooker.

With teeth.

That right there is a hook to swing on.

So, the theme initially sold me on the game. Alternative history stuff is always interesting, and this game does some interesting things with it. I mean, the box art depicts the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, except the soldiers are driving that flag into a squirming mass of barely identifiable tentacled things.

However, there are two things I really like about the theme. I'm going to list them. Course I am...

1. It's not Lovecraft. At least, not as far as I am concerned.

I absolutely love the work of H. P. Lovecraft, but I feel his work has been used too often as a source for board games. While some people are comparing Fireteam Zero to Lovecraft, the themes are quite different. Fireteam's theme is a fusion of body horror and the supernatural. Having a few creatures with tentacles does not mean the theme is Lovecraftian. Or, at least, I don't think it does.

2. It's schlocky.

I am a big fan of horror movies, and when I look at the creatures in Fireteam, I see many things that remind me of cool, schlock-horror films I love. I see references to The Thing, Slither, The Devil's Chair, Blood Beach, Night of the Scarecrow, Infestation, Blood Glacier, and many other films. And that's just cool.

So, I was already hooked on the theme, and then I saw the gameplay. One of my favourite board games is Gears of War, which is a co-operative game in which a small group of marines work together against a horde of aliens. It is a superb game that allows you to act on an ally's turn by playing cards from your hand that have different "support" benefits. Unfortunately, Fantasy Flight Games never really ran with it, and apart from a small expansion, the game was pretty much neglected. Furthermore, the game is not without its problems: Namely, an ungodly setup time.

I always felt that someone could take the bare mechanisms from Gears of War and turn the dial up to 11, and I really feel that is was the designers of Fireteam have done.

The game also feels incredibly customisable, offering a wealth of replayability. As an example, consider the first mission:

The mission requires the team to search 12 spots for parts to fix a ferry. All the time, they will be harried by eight corrupted animal minions. Minions respawn every time they die, so the horde is endless. The twist is, over time, the enemies mutate. New abilities are drawn randomly from a deck of cards, and the mutations stack. So, you play the mission once, and you might be facing corrupted animals that spit poison, and swarm together in packs. You play the same mission again, but this time, you are facing corrupted animals that sprout extra legs, bleed acid, and swim. (Note: I just made all those abilities up. I have no idea what the real abilities are.)

Same creatures, different rules, different tactics.

But then you can mix things up, by playing the same mission, but swapping out minions for different types of minions.

And did I mention the non-player characters? You get to take two with you, and anyone who kickstarts the project gets a total of four to choose from. These NPCs provide special abilities, but you have to keep them safe from the enemy.

Basically, the combination of choice of heroes, choice of hero special abilities, choice of NPCs, choice of minions, and the random allocation of mutations throughout the mission mean each game should be quite different.

The last thing to mention is the pledge amount. For $85, you get the base game, an exclusive NPC character (a cute doggy), and all the stretch goals. Sure, there are not as many stretch goals as there are with campaigns from bigger companies, but there are still some nice extra plastic miniatures, and some new twist and hero power cards. Enough to make that $85 pledge look like a very nice deal as far as I am concerned.

In fact, people who care about miniatures should be quite pleased with the plastic loadout for this game. There are 52 plastic figures in total, including five heroes, four NPCs, three "families" of monsters, and some bonus beasties. There are 21 unique sculpts, including three massive boss monsters that tower over everything else. I believe they are all sculpted by someone who used to make miniatures for Heroscape, but don't quote me on that.

The company is actually so proud of the miniatures, they are offering a pledge level that just gets the miniatures.

Frankly, I don't care about that. I want the game.

And that's an important point to stress: I want the game. I am very excited about the game. And that's why this whole post sounds like an infomercial. My enthusiasm is going to have crept into every word, so take those words with a good pinch of salt. Go on. Salt makes everything taste better anyway. Stick some bacon on there too.

But, in the sake of being fair and even-handed, I'm going to mention a list of things that concern me about the project:

First of all, one of the stretch goals is a CD. I couldn't be less thrilled with the prospect of a CD to listen to while I play a board game if I tried. If they swapped that CD out for a copy of the first book in the series, I'd do a little Snoopy dance.

It seems like you only get four dice in the box. There should be six, because it is possible for some attacks to involve rolling six dice. I am not opposed to rerolling sometimes, but with four dice, it seems like rerolling will be required for most attacks. Seriously, put six dice in the box, and six dice in a paid add-on. Hell, put six in as stretch goal. Instead of that damned CD.

And then there is delivery time. The Kickstarter claims the game will be available in October. That's a pretty close deadline. I would like to know if that is at all feasible. Most Kickstarters slide a bit, but this is a smaller project than some others. I would at least like to know if it is realistic to expect the game before Christmas.

And there you have it. That's why I'm backing Fireteam Zero.

Thank you for indulging me. I promise I'll review something soon. Probably Dark Darker Darkest, which is another game I got through Kickstarter...

Review - World of Warcraft: Miniatures Game - Core Set Booster

World of Warcraft: Miniatures GamePublished by Upper Deck Entertainment
Designed by a whole bunch of people
For 2 players, aged 14 to adult

What seems like a very long time ago indeed, I picked up the basic starter set for the imaginatively titled World of Warcraft: Miniatures Game. I thought it seemed like a pretty decent game, but it was hard to tell from the four miniatures provided in the starter.

I really wanted to get the deluxe starter, but that's like hen's teeth these days... Really pointy. Or something.

Anyway, I did the next best thing. I managed to grab two Core Set boosters for the princely sum of £2 each. Frankly, £4 for six prepainted miniatures and a bunch of cards (one character card and two skill cards per figure) is a hard deal to pass up, and I am a sucker for a bargain.

I wasn't really sure what I would get with these boosters. I knew the game had three factions (Horde, Alliance, and Beasts), but I didn't know anything about rarity levels, or how figures were distributed throughout the boxes.

As it turns out, the boosters are random, but all three figures in each booster come from the same faction, which is a really nice touch The two boosters I bought had different pictures on the front, but I have no idea if that is in any way related to which faction the booster is for. I happened to get one booster containing Alliance dudes, and one booster with Horde dudes, so when combined with my starter set, I ended up with five characters for each of those factions, which is just enough for a bit of variety. I would have really liked a set of Beasts, as they seem more interesting to me; but hey... You can't have everything.

Now, it may surprise some people, but I have never played the World of Warcraft computer game. It never really appealed to me, and I don't really have the time to invest in something like that. However, I do know a few things about the game, and I have heard the story of the infamous Leeroy Jenkins. So, it was with a great degree of pleasure, that I realised the first character to pop out of my Alliance booster was no less than the chicken-loving paladin.

"Leeeerrrroooooyyyy Jeeeennnnkkkiiinnss!"

Honestly, that one figure alone made it all worthwhile.

As it turns out, my other alliance characters were pretty cool too. A chunky Drenai shaman (does David Gemmell get royalties for them using that name?), and a dark elf mage. Big, imposing characters, in cool poses. The elf even has translucent bits on her staff. I like that sort of thing. I'm weird.



Character cards.

After that, opening the second box was always likely to be a disappointment. And yeah... It was.

I got a wimpy looking blood elf archer, a forsaken (undead?) rogue that I had to bath in boiling water because she was a bit tipsy, and an orc shaman that is half the size of the awesome orc from the starter set.

Blah.

So, I was not particularly blown away with my Horde figures, possibly because they were all so small compared to the Alliance guys. I think of the Horde as the bad guys, so I always imagine they should look more imposing and threatening.



The rogue (front right) looks thoroughly annoyed with Leeroy, dontcha think?

Still, overall, I am happy with what I got from two boosters. If I can find more at a really good price I will buy them (I really want some of those Beasts), but if that never happens, I think the ten figures I have gives a good amount of variety.

Shut Up & Sit Down

Shut Up & Sit Down!

No, I'm not being rude. I wouldn't do that.

Actually, I would.

But I'm not. Not this time, anyway.

But I do mean it...

Shut Up & Sit Down!

We (being me) interrupt your scheduled broadcast to bring you this public service announcement: Shut Up & Sit Down needs YOU.

If you don't know who the Shut Up & Sit Down team are, then you really need to make it your mission to find out. I'll drop a link at the bottom of this post so you can head over to their website and check it out. I would put the link HERE, but if I did that, you'd click it. And then you'd never come back.

And I'd be lonely.

Because, you see, Shut Up & Sit Down basically do something similar to what I do. Only with more current board games. And videos. And, you know... jokes.

If you are fed up with boring, mundane reviews about board games; if you want to see reviews that don't just regurgitate the rules but actually tell you what it feels like to experience a game; if you want to laugh, cry, and stare into the dark abyss of the human soul... Well, you need help. But you also need Shut Up & Sit Down.

I have only recently discovered the site, and frankly I don't know how I survived without it. I don't know any of the people responsible for running it, but I already feel like they're my friends. They just come across as genuinely decent people who are a lot of fun, and love the same hobby we all love. They are the sort of people I would want to sit down to play a game with. They would probably make me wear a cocktail dress, but it would almost certainly be worth it.

Almost.

But Shut Up & Sit Down is hungry. The team need to eat. And that's where you come in.

No, they don't want to eat you.

But once you have visited the site, and you have finished absorbing all the boardgaming goodness there like some horrifying, vampiric sponge, click on the little "Donate" option at the top of the page. Drop the guys a few quid. It will enable them to keep doing what they're doing. And that's a good thing, because I wouldn't want them doing anything else (and I'm pretty sure the authorities wouldn't either). And hey, if you donate enough money, they'll even send you some goodies. Sounds like a good deal to me.

This is the end of the public service announcement. Next up, more shitty out of production board games...

Oh yeah, and here's that link I promised.

Please don't forget me once you've seen how a professional outfit does this sort of thing.

The Purge

Well, it had to happen sooner or later...

I've had a clear out.

I know, I know. What am I thinking?

Well, I'm thinking I have too many games. Not including expansions, individual decks of cards, or multiples of existing games, I have (had!) about 150 games spread across three book shelves, and a large part of my study floor.

I decided enough was enough (when actually enough is never really enough, if I'm being honest).

I have a lot of games I don't enjoy, and a lot of games I am never going to play again. I even have some games I have never, ever played and probably never will. And at some point, you have to draw a line in the sand.

So I got rid of some.

I got rid of quite a few actually.

First out of the door was Platoon. I purchased this game on eBay in 2012, and I was pretty excited about it. I made the purchase at a time when I was trying to expand my collection to include some different styles of games. The only other chit-based war game I have is the rather lovely Valley of the Four Winds (which I haven't reviewed yet), so I thought this was a niche I needed to fill. What better way to fill it than with a game based on a film I love?



Platoon.

Platoon was released in 1986, and allows you to recreate four of the fire fights in the film. It looks great, it really does. You get a lovely mounted board (in two pieces), and lots of chits to represent your characters, many of which are those from the movie. While in many war games a chit will represent a large number of troops, in Platoon a chit is just a single person, and that lends the game a nice, claustrophobic, skirmish feel, which is perfectly suited to the theme of sweaty, brutal, jungle fighting.



Look out behind you!

What I liked even more about the chits is that they are designed to stand up on little plastic stands, which means (a) they are easier to move around, and (b) your opponent can't see what each chit represents because they can't see what's on the side facing you. This allows for an exciting "fog of war" element, enabling you to use "fake soldiers" to lure out troops and create ambushes.

It all looks fabulous.

But, there's a reason I don't have war games in my collection. I don't really like war games. I don't really ever feel the urge to play them. Furthermore, I normally game with at least two other people, so two-player games just don't get as much of a look in these days. If I am going to play a two-player game, I will usually be playing against my wife, who has about as much desire to play a game about Vietnam as she has desire to listen to one of my renditions of Lady in Red while pushing a trolley around Tesco.

Of course, there is a very real risk that I have just got rid of a really good game; but as I would probably never get to play it, I might as well sell it to someone who will get more enjoyment out of it.

Close on the heels of Platoon was Incursion. I reviewed Incursion only a few days ago, and frankly, I wasn't impressed. I felt that it took the muscular, beating heart of Space Hulk, and then added a load of extra mechanisms that just didn't work: Card play that lacked any strategy, command point manipulation that created ridiculous situations, and overwatch rules that were horrifically overpowered in every way you care to imagine. I might have been tempted to keep the game if I didn't have Space Hulk, but I do, so I didn't. So there.



Incursion - a beautiful turd of a game.

Another game that I recently reviewed before winging out the window was Conquest. This is actually an exceptionally good game. I mean a really good game.

I mean a really clever, elegant, well thought out, beautifully simple, deeply strategic game.

By which, I mean, a game that just wasn't fun.

If you could dedicate the time to getting good at the game, then I think you could have a lot of fun with it. But in my limited experience, I found it too difficult to get my head around.

Another good two-player abstract game that I got rid of was Quantum. This might be surprising to anyone who read my review, because I was very positive about the game. However, I eventually realised the game just wasn't getting played. And it was so incredibly beige it was making my other games look drab.



Quantum - remake it in better colours and I'll probably buy it again.

Still, I wonder if getting rid of Quantum is something I will eventually come to regret, because... Well... It is a damned clever game.

For very different reasons, I also got rid of Reiner Knizia's Head-to-Head Poker. This isn't a very good or interesting game at all. Furthermore, you can play it with just a deck of cards, so why have a big box taking up space on my games shelf?



Head-to-Head Poker.

Speaking of games that aren't very good or interesting, I also got rid of Summonaria, Chaotic, and Huntik. I reviewed all three games in recent weeks, and I really have nothing more to say about them. Three bad games that were eating up space that an equal number of good games could be filling.



Chaotic decks.

Finally, I got rid of Trivial Pursuit, simply because I have no bloody clue why I had the game in my collection in the first place. I hate trivia games.

So there we have it. My games collection has been thinned out (a bit). And it's going to get thinner still. I have at least three or four more games that I intend to get rid of (once I have reviewed them).

The question is, what am I going to do with all this new space?

Where did I put my credit card...?

Sheep Impact (A Charity Shop Adventure)

No, the title of this blog entry is not the long-awaited sequel to that awful disaster movie with a meteor colliding with Earth... What was that called...? Oh yeah, Armageddon.

Sheep impact just sort of sums up today's exciting charity shop purchases.

It's been quite a while since I wrote about charity shop finds here on Always Board, Never Boring. That's mainly because I haven't found anything good. I always look in charity shops for old out of production board games, but it really is getting harder to find anything worthwhile at a reasonable price. There are several reasons, of course. Most importantly, charity shops have got wise to the true value of things. When a load of games turn up in store, one of the staff hops on the internet and figures out which bits are worth anything, and then jacks the price up accordingly. I don't really mind that. It means a charity is making a bit more money, which is no bad thing.

The other major reason that charity shops don't tend to have a lot of good stuff is because of bloody eBay. Nowadays, when parents clear out their children's toys, they don't give them to charity; the toys end up being sold on eBay. Only broken crap, or stuff that parents don't realise is valuable, will end up in a charity store.

So, most of the time, charity stores are a complete bust. I really don't need a copy of Carol Vorderman's Sudoku in my games collection. However, occasionally (and these times are precious to me), I will find one of those things that has value, but didn't get pushed onto eBay (either because the person who gave it away didn't realise is was worth anything, or because that person simply couldn't be bothered to go through the process of selling it).

While I can't say my finds today were Earth-shattering, they were definitely the best things I have found for a while. Definitely worthy of a blog entry, anyway.

First up, the sheep...

I herd this was pretty good... (Man, I kill myself sometimes.)

Saw this copy of A Shepherd and His Dog and had to grab it. Tape monkeys had been at work, but the tape on one edge of the box had peeled off, so I was able to look inside. The game was complete - five fences, five plastic sheep, one dog, and Freddy Krueger.

Seriously? This guy will give me nightmares. I feel sorry for the lamb...

Okay, probably not the greatest game in the world, but the pieces are cute (with the exception of that bloody-faced shepherd), and it's classic Spears. I couldn't leave it on the shelf.

Next up, the impact...

Dinosaurs with guns. Barney's gone bad.

Anyone who has spent any time on my blog will know I'm a bit of a theme junkie. I love a good theme, so there was no way on God's green Earth I was going to leave behind a game about dinosaurs with guns fighting oil rig workers in the desert. Why that isn't already a movie I will never know.

Impact, The Battle for Wolf Ridge, is pure plastic goodness. Four three-dimensional plastic boards, 16 excellent pre-painted figures, and spring-loaded guns that really fire missiles at each other. Colour me excited.

Dinosaurs. Guns. How can this be a bad game?

So there we have it: A successful trip round the charity shops. Expect reviews when, you know, I actually play the games.

Oh, and one final thing: Impact was published by Drumond Park. That would be the same company that published Carol Vorderman's Sudoku. I guess I'm getting a little closer to buying that game after all.

Review - A NinjaGO storage solution

Back in October 2012, I reviewed NinjaGo, a Lego game that I didn't rate particularly highly. While I didn't think much of the game, I didn't have the heart to get rid of it because... Well, you know... It's Lego. You can't get rid of Lego.

Anyway, I kept the game, and played it a few times with my 11-year-old brother-in-law. He really enjoyed it, so I guess Lego know what they're doing after all!

Fast-forward to February 2013: I discovered Amazon.co.uk were having a sale on some of their Lego products, including a NinjaGO Spinner Storage Box. These nifty little cases are normally £15 or so, but Amazon were selling them off for less than £5. I don't particularly need a storage solution for my epic collection of two NinjaGO spinners, but I know a bargain when I see one.

(Man, I am such a sucker.)

I purchased one of the cases, thinking it would be a bit tidier than the screwbox I had my spinners stored in; but I wasn't really expecting much. However, when the case actually arrived, I had to admit I was pretty impressed.

It came in a nice cardboard sleeve to keep it unmarked, and I was slightly amused to see this sleeve included a diagram showing how to put the Lego bits inside. Have we really reached the stage where we need instructions on how to put things in a box?

After I had removed the sleeve I was presented with a pretty cool piece of artwork featuring Lego ninjas and snake people. (I'm glad it was the snake people, as I think they are more interesting than the skeletons and stone people that comprise the other enemies in the NinjaGO line of products.)



The NinjaGO spinner storage case - Ninjas are so cool.

The case itself is very sturdy, with a durable plastic handle and two straps that fix in place with poppers to hold the lid closed.

The case is actually well made and sturdy.

Inside, there is a plastic flap to store cards in, and a moulded plastic section that can house plenty of spinners, figures, weapons, blocks, and instructions.



Moulded tray stores 10 spinners and accessories.

It's a good little product: Certainly not worth £15, but well worth £5. And yes, it does look tidier on my shelf that that old screwbox I was using before.

Lego, NinjaGO and Things Like That...

Last year, I posted a review of NinjaGO, a so-called "game" from Lego, which was a little bit too light on the game aspect for my tastes. Now, I'll admit, I am not exactly the target audience; but even so, I thought it was a pretty poor show.

However, a little while ago my wife's eleven-year-old brother was around our place. He isn't great at listening to the rules of a game (or adhering to those rules once they have been explained), so we ended up playing NinjaGO. We didn't play with the cards, or any of the "official" rules; we just kitted out our little men with different weapons and winged them at each other. My brother-in-law absolutely loved it, and I have to admit that even I found myself having a bit of fun. We ended up trying to make the most outlandish weapon combinations possible, and sticking multiple Lego figures on each spinner. It's still not a game, but I have to admit it was pretty fun for a little while.

In a completely unrelated event, just before Christmas I invited a group of friends over for a "Christmas Party" (really, my excuse to get my friends over to play some board games). As there were a few "non-gamers" coming, I knew we would end up playing things like Logo or Cluedo, so I thought it would be funny to buy each of my guests one of the Lego blind bags. The intention was, each guest would open his blind bag, assemble the minifig, and then that minifig would be his avatar for the evening and would replace the usual playing piece in whatever games were played.

I intended to add whichever Lego figure I got for myself to my pot of NinjaGO stuff to increase my options the next time I challenged my brother-in-law. That being the case, you can imagine my disappointment when I opened my blind bag to find this:

As far as Lego minifigs go, this one is absolutely great; but as a character for NinjaGO there is a problem - NO LEGS! The alien queen is wearing a floor-length dress that sticks out at the back, so she doesn't fit in the spinner. Of course, even if she did, that ray gun she's carrying isn't going to be a lot of use.

Never mind, my wife had bought me an extra blind bag, so maybe there would be something more useful in that one...

Now this is more like it. The Lego cowgirl has real legs, so she fits in the spinners. She also comes with an awesome lasso, which is quite large and creates quite a large surface area for whacking opponent ninjas with. Unfortunately, the lasso is made out of a rubbery material instead of hard plastic. Still, a marked improvement over the alien queen.

As well as the blind bags, I also managed to find a couple of old vikings from a dragon set my wife bought me years ago:

The vikings look suitably mean, but their helmets make them a bit top heavy (the horns on the helmet also tend to fly off during particularly violent spins). This viking's axe is massive, and is particularly good for smashing up wimpy ninjas.

Finally, only today, a good friend of mine gave me a Lego minifig from series nine as a gift. He did this because the minifig in question is a cyclops, and there is a cyclops character in The Legend Riders (my series of fantasy books for children and young adults). Now, this cyclops... Well... I'll show you the picture:

Awesome, right? Possibly the finest Lego minifig ever made. Beautiful detailing on the head and belt, and a nice big club which is perfect for NinjaGO battles. You can even reverse the piece inside his head to give him a different facial expression:

Man, I love Lego... And if you want to get yourself one of these awesome cyclops guys, you can do so right here.

So there we have it: the next time I play NinjaGo, I can use ninjas, crazy snake people, a cow girl, vikings, a cyclops, and even an alien queen (if she's prepared to swap her skirt for someone else's legs for a while).

The Wing Warrior - Available Now!

I know, I know - two posts in a row that not only have nothing to do with boardgames, but which are also shameless plugs. I'm sorry.

I'll make you a deal... Read this post, and tomorrow I'll post a review of an old classic boardgame that I've been meaning to review for ages.

Agreed?

Agreed.

Good.

So, I'll cut to the chase - The Wing Warrior, first book in The Legend Riders series, is now available for Amazon Kindle.

In a world where magic has been banned, and the legendary creatures of old are nothing more than memories, an ancient and evil force has returned.

In the shadow of this terror, a young boy called Nimbus sets in motion a chain of events that arouses a leviathan from its slumber and awakens an even more sinister power within his eight-year-old sister.

But Nimbus’s problems don’t end there: his family is falling apart, his best friend has developed a nasty streak of jealousy, and he is about to discover just how difficult it is to become a hero when you’re dead.

 

You can find out more at www.thelegendriders.com

 

 

The Legend Riders

Okay, this isn't a post about board games; but this is my blog, and if I want to use it for a bit of shameless self-promotion then I will...

I would like to announce the imminent release of my new book, The Wing Warrior, which will be available from Amazon's Kindle store.

In a world where magic has been banned, and the legendary creatures of old are nothing more than memories, an ancient and evil force has returned. In the shadow of this terror, a young boy called Nimbus sets in motion a chain of events that arouses a leviathan from its slumber and awakens an even more sinister power within his eight-year-old sister.

But Nimbus has bigger problems to deal with. His family is falling apart, his best friend has developed a nasty streak of jealousy, and he is about to discover how difficult it is to be a hero when you're dead.



The Wing Warrior - front cover art by James Lloyd.

The book has been written with the 9-12 age group in mind, but I think there are plenty of older readers and even some adults who will find something to enjoy.

They say that everybody has one good book in them; I am hoping I have at least three, because The Wing Warrior is the first book in a trilogy entitled The Legend Riders. The series has been structured so that in each book new legendary creatures are introduced (a leviathan and a dragon in book one, a unicorn in book two, and a pegasus in book three). The mythological elements of the stories should find an audience with children who have enjoyed The Spiderwick Chronicles, by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, and are now looking for a slightly more adult book dealing with some similar themes.

If you would like to know more, then visit www.thelegendriders.com or follow me on Twitter at @KevinWOutlaw

Dungeon Command - A New Addiction?

I came home from work yesterday to find a large Amazon parcel waiting for me. It could only mean one thing: my preordered copies of Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth and Dungeon Command: Heart of Cormyr had finally arrived.

These are the "faction packs" for the new skirmish level miniatures game from Wizards of the Coast. Each pack contains 12 miniatures and all the cards and boards needed for one person to play the game; so of course, I had ordered both packs (how else am I going to play the game against my wife?). Each pack also contains some cards so you can use the miniatures in the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure System games (like Wrath of Ashardalon); but as I don't own any of those games, I couldn't give a monkey's.

Tearing into the packaging, I was presented with two rather beautifully illustrated boxes. I had already read somewhere else (probably over on www.BoardGameGeek.com) that the boxes are like the kind you see doughnuts being sold in, and that's pretty accurate. They are flimsy, with a hinged, folding top. When closed, they are sturdy enough for what they contain, but you certainly wouldn't want to stack anything on top of them.

I am assuming Wizards of the Coast expect you to chuck out the boxes and store your miniatures in some other way; but I'll be damned if I'm doing that. The only boxes for games I have ever chucked out were the boxes for my Navia Dratp starters, and I really regret it.

Despite the rather disappointing quality of the boxes, I have to say the graphic design is incredible. The artwork is dramatic and it really makes you want to open those boxes and play. I feel the same way about the box for Wizards of the Coast's Lords of Waterdeep: The game sits on the shelf just begging to be played. I suppose this is a personal thing, and quite difficult to explain; so here are some pictures to show you what I mean:



Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth - spidery.



Dungeon Command: Heart of Cormyr - dragony.

Unfortunately, once the boxes were opened, I have to admit to being underwhelmed by the contents; it seems that for every thing that has been done right, there is a negative to counterbalance it.

I really liked the rulebook: It is printed on thick, matte paper so you don't get annoying glare from overhead lights during play. It also seems well laid out, detailed enough without being tiresome, and has lots of illustrations and diagrams.

There are two types of cards: Those that show the creatures in your faction (used to show special abilities, statistics, and for tracking wounds), and those that show orders you can give to your creatures. They are all beautifully illustrated (if you can call pictures of fat, giant spiders beautiful), and the layout of the creature cards is great. When designing cards that are used in association with a playing piece it is important to make it so that you can easily tell which cards represent which models. You can do this by using a picture of the model, or you can use an illustration which shows the character in the same stance as the model. If you don't do either of these things, then there will be in-game confusion. Wizards of the Coast have got around this problem with a rather wonderful solution: The top part of the card shows a lovely piece of artwork, usually depicting the creature in action, and then in the bottom right of the card there is a small photograph of the model. This means you can have dynamic artwork while avoiding any possible in-game confusion. Top marks.

Unfortunately, the cards are a little on the thin side. They are not the worst cards in the world, but I have definitely seen much better.

The sheet of punch tokens are perfectly serviceable, but it looks like they have included enough treasure chests, wound markers, identifier tokens and morale/leadership trackers for two war bands. It's almost like, when the punch sheet was designed, the intention was that this would be a self-contained game with all the pieces needed for two players to fight; but somewhere along the line someone went, "Hey, you guys, we can make these tools buy this game twice if we take out one of the armies." I'm probably wrong; I'm probably being unfair to the designers; but hey, this is my blog!

Each box contains two large and two small boards which you build together with another set of boards from a second "faction pack" to create the arena. The boards are double-sided, and they look great; but there are two issues. First of all, the little symbols that indicate difficult or hazardous terrain are quite faint and can be difficult to see. However, the bigger issue is the way the jigsaw edges fit together.



The game board - gappy.

The boards are by no means a snug fit. Why? Is this some kind of production error, or were Wizards of the Coast worried we would mash the boards up trying to fit together the jigsaw pieces? I don't know about you guys, but I've been building jigsaw puzzles since I was about six months old; is it too much to ask for a snug fit? (as the actress said the bishop).

Okay, okay. I'll get the main event: The pre-painted miniatures. I am a painter, but I am also a father and husband with two jobs, a blog, and a shelf of games I would like to play every now and again. So, while I can paint - and do paint - I am always happy to buy something with pre-painted pieces. I know they will not be up to the standard I could do myself; but even half-decent is good enough for me. Unfortunately, Dungeon Command sports the absolute worst pre-paints I have ever seen. The paint that has been used is very watery, and has run into creases where it shouldn't; and paint has been slapped on so hurriedly that I have some pieces with cloaks the same colour as their armour. My Cormyr War Wizard looks like Mike Myers from Halloween.




Bad pre-paints - note gold paint on the cloak, and NO FACE!

As a comparison, I own Claustrophobia, Mage Knight: Board Game, a shedload of Lord of the Rings: Tradeable Miniatures Game, Transformers Armada, and I have experience with Heroscape, Heroclix and the Alien vs Predator Horrorclix pieces. All of the aforementioned games have pre-paints which are a hundred times better than what you get in the Dungeon Command game.

This is not the end of the world: Bad paint is better than no paint, and from a distance the miniatures look fine. Up close, they might make you a bit sad.

However, not all the paint jobs are terrible: I have a very nicely done dragon in the Cormyr set, and a decent Umber Hulk in the Lolth set. Here's a picture of the dragon.



Copper Dragon from Heart of Cormyr.

Now I'm off to play a few games. Expect a review at some point (covering basic game rules) and then probably a review of each "faction pack" (if I can be bothered).